Nvidia reports record quarterly revenue on strong gaming and data centre sales
Revenue touched a new quarterly record of $7.1 billion amid the continuing worldwide chip shortage
Nvidia has posted another quarter of record revenues, beating analyst's expectations, as the pandemic boosted demand for videogames and services offered by data centres.
The company posted record revenue in its gaming, data centre and professional visualisation businesses.
Nvidia's revenue touched a new quarterly record of $7.1 billion (£5.2 billion), up 50.3 per cent compared to the same period last year and a nine per cent increase quarter-on-quarter. Wall Street expectations were $6.8 billion (about £5 billion).
Data centre revenues of $2.9 billion (£2.2 billion) also surpassed expectations, up 54.5 per cent year-on-year on strong demand for artificial intelligence chips.
Nvidia chief financial officer Colette Kress said the record increase in data centre revenue was mainly driven by sales of Ampere architecture products, which are used for cloud computing and other workloads like natural language processing.
The gaming division recorded revenues of $3.22 billion (£2.4 billion), up 42 per cent YoY and beating analyst's expectations of $3.18 billion (about £2.35 billion).
Nvidia said the increase was primarily due to increased sales of its GeForce consumer graphics processors, although supply remained limited.
Nvidia's gaming graphics chips now have software that prevents them from being used for cryptocurrency mining. The company said it sold $105 million-worth (£78 million) of cryptocurrency-specific graphics cards, down from $266 million (£197 million) in the previous quarter.
"The third quarter was outstanding, with record revenue," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said.
"Demand for Nvidia AI is surging, driven by hyperscale and cloud scale-out, and broadening adoption by more than 25,000 companies. Nvidia RTX has reinvented computer graphics with ray tracing and AI, and is the ideal upgrade for the large, growing market of gamers and creators, as well as designers and professionals building home workstations."
Nvidia expects to record revenues of $7.4 billion (£5.5 billion) in Q4, representing 47.9 per cent YoY growth.
However, despite record quarterly sales and revenue, not everything is going well for Nvidia.
The company's planned $40 billion (£30 billion) deal to acquire British chip designer Arm has hit a regulatory wall in the UK, where government has ordered an in-depth review.
The inquiry will take around six months, following which the government could approve the deal, block it, or allow it to pass with certain undertakings.
Nvidia said it would work with the government to address concerns. It said a phase 2 probe would allow it to show how the deal would help strengthen Arm and encourage competition.
The US chipmaker agreed to buy Arm from Softbank in September 2020, triggering a backlash from rivals, politicians and customers. Nvidia is itself an Arm licensee, prompting fears that it could give itself preferential treatment. Other licensees are concerned that the acquisition could impact Arm's position as a neutral supplier.
The deal also needs to get through regulators in both the USA and China before it is finalised.
In the company's filing Wednesday, Kress said the US Federal Trade Commission had expressed concerns about the deal and that Nvidia was in talks with the regulator to address those concerns.